I'm a great Minidisc fan and have what is really a budget machine (the Sony MDS JE480) bought new back around 2005 I suppose. I wish I had been able to get one of the higher specification upmarket machines and often have a quick scan for any suitable candidates that regularly appear from the usual suspects...
Well a Sony MDS JB920 really caught my eye. Cosmetic condition is absolutely everything to me and it's so sad to see high end gear in a tatty/damaged/gashed condition. Looking long and hard at all the images and this one seemed good. The description said it had spent its life in a cabinet and looking for tell tale signs of debris around buttons and grotty mains leads and the like raised no concerns.
I took a chance. At just over £200 this was no giveaway but it looked good...
It arrived in under 48 hours and was packaged so well that it would do any manufacturer proud. A quick visual inspection showed it was really in pristine condition. The display window was 100% perfect with not a single mark or blemish. Wow. Even the comprehensive remote looked pretty much unused.
All these Sony Minidisc recorders are pretty sophisticated in the system control and CPU department and they have a non volatile log of operating hours in record and playback modes. This should be interesting then... woah, what... 21 hours recording (which you have to multiply by four to get the approx. time the laser has been in 'high power mode 'and just 61 hours playback time from new. What !! That is insane. This seems to be virtually unused.
Internally it is 'as new'. You wouldn't/couldn't differentiate it from a new unused boxed item.
Twin pulse DAC's on this one and JRC2114 opamps which are similar to (but a slightly higher spec) 5532
This models have one unusual circuit design feature in that they use a rechargeable lithium coin cell for retaining the real time clock and any user data if it is used to do a timer recording. Its reading around 2.8 volts but I guess it may have been unplugged for a while. I think I might replace that. Rather thoughtfully it is mounted on a plug in removable 'battery' PCB containing just the battery.
This is the original battery. I replaced it with a Panasonic VL2020.
The remote looked unused.
The PSU has some rather nice caps in there. Given my experiences of Sony gear I don't think this will need any replacements yet.
All up and running.
There is an ongoing little problem I'm trying to solve (not the MD recorder as my other is the same) and that is it will not record some DAB radio stations digitally (TOSLINK or Coax inputs) and it just give a D-in Unlock error. This is something that has only happened with a new Rotel DAB Tuner/Streamer although the digital feed is perfect when fed to a DAC. There was a suspicion of 'copy bits' in the data stream but that has been discounted by enquiries to the channels concerned. It is an ongoing issue that is currently being investigated. I never had this problem with my old Pure DAB tuner but that has recently become unreliable (caps usually) and a couple of weeks ago it started blasting the 100ma mains fuse. Turns out the tiny toroidal mains transformer has some weird internal short. The primary reads around 150k but it blows fuses with the secondary unplugged.
Was it pushed or did it jump... maybe another fault has seen the transformer off. It has multiple windings so its a bit of pain to cobble a few different rails together to test it.
This one for those that remember.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/what-did-you-last-repair.313739/post-7402981
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/what-did-you-last-repair.313739/post-6893516
Well a Sony MDS JB920 really caught my eye. Cosmetic condition is absolutely everything to me and it's so sad to see high end gear in a tatty/damaged/gashed condition. Looking long and hard at all the images and this one seemed good. The description said it had spent its life in a cabinet and looking for tell tale signs of debris around buttons and grotty mains leads and the like raised no concerns.
I took a chance. At just over £200 this was no giveaway but it looked good...
It arrived in under 48 hours and was packaged so well that it would do any manufacturer proud. A quick visual inspection showed it was really in pristine condition. The display window was 100% perfect with not a single mark or blemish. Wow. Even the comprehensive remote looked pretty much unused.
All these Sony Minidisc recorders are pretty sophisticated in the system control and CPU department and they have a non volatile log of operating hours in record and playback modes. This should be interesting then... woah, what... 21 hours recording (which you have to multiply by four to get the approx. time the laser has been in 'high power mode 'and just 61 hours playback time from new. What !! That is insane. This seems to be virtually unused.
Internally it is 'as new'. You wouldn't/couldn't differentiate it from a new unused boxed item.
Twin pulse DAC's on this one and JRC2114 opamps which are similar to (but a slightly higher spec) 5532
This models have one unusual circuit design feature in that they use a rechargeable lithium coin cell for retaining the real time clock and any user data if it is used to do a timer recording. Its reading around 2.8 volts but I guess it may have been unplugged for a while. I think I might replace that. Rather thoughtfully it is mounted on a plug in removable 'battery' PCB containing just the battery.
This is the original battery. I replaced it with a Panasonic VL2020.
The remote looked unused.
The PSU has some rather nice caps in there. Given my experiences of Sony gear I don't think this will need any replacements yet.
All up and running.
There is an ongoing little problem I'm trying to solve (not the MD recorder as my other is the same) and that is it will not record some DAB radio stations digitally (TOSLINK or Coax inputs) and it just give a D-in Unlock error. This is something that has only happened with a new Rotel DAB Tuner/Streamer although the digital feed is perfect when fed to a DAC. There was a suspicion of 'copy bits' in the data stream but that has been discounted by enquiries to the channels concerned. It is an ongoing issue that is currently being investigated. I never had this problem with my old Pure DAB tuner but that has recently become unreliable (caps usually) and a couple of weeks ago it started blasting the 100ma mains fuse. Turns out the tiny toroidal mains transformer has some weird internal short. The primary reads around 150k but it blows fuses with the secondary unplugged.
Was it pushed or did it jump... maybe another fault has seen the transformer off. It has multiple windings so its a bit of pain to cobble a few different rails together to test it.
This one for those that remember.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/what-did-you-last-repair.313739/post-7402981
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/what-did-you-last-repair.313739/post-6893516
Thanks
The discs crop up now again as unopened packs. I might try and stock up a bit more on those while I can.As you can probably guess, I like wiring to be neat and that rack lends itself to running the cables in the frame which is open on the inside. The tuner and CD player optical output feeds go into an optical splitter/combiner and on to the recorder... and of course
with this new MD recorder I could make use of its two optical inputs and run each separately. Hmmm...
Unfortunately not although it was part of the QS range.
This would be nice
https://audio-database.com/SONY-ESPRIT/player/mds-ja50es.html
This would be nice
https://audio-database.com/SONY-ESPRIT/player/mds-ja50es.html
Yes, the times they are a changing....
Was giving away a Tape deck with Dolby S, last development of Dolby fighting against CD. Worked well.
To a small radio station for free and 300 cassettes.
Technically the work with tapes was outdated but lastly I got nostalgic and revived my Rega planar 3 with 1042 goldring stylus.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/new-15-full-range-fane.308652/post-7438452
Was giving away a Tape deck with Dolby S, last development of Dolby fighting against CD. Worked well.
To a small radio station for free and 300 cassettes.
Technically the work with tapes was outdated but lastly I got nostalgic and revived my Rega planar 3 with 1042 goldring stylus.
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/new-15-full-range-fane.308652/post-7438452